The Besties - Tired of the World? Try a Fantasy Life

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

The cult 3DS game Fantasy Life returns, now on all major platforms and PC. The sequel blends Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and action-RPGs. Plus, we live the life of Teen in To a T, the new game from the creator of Katamari Damacy. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

So I met some Lego dorks over the weekend, and Lego dorks are legit. Oh, for sure. Lego dorks do not kid around. No, they don't. I went to the New York Botanical Garden, which was a lovely place in New York City, and they were doing an activation with Lego.

And you have like kids come by, and they build plants out of Lego, and you get to keep the plants. It's really cute and cool. And the line was about three hours long. We did not wait in line, we knew to get there early, because we knew about the Lego dorks, but holy shit, the Lego dorks brought it hard.

They wanted that plant. Isn't that kind of good for everybody who's not a Lego dork? Because all the Lego dorks, kind of people write online, meaning the rest of the area, wide open for you. Yeah, it was much more empty. I mean, to be fair, I'd also wait in line, but I was smart enough to get ahead of the LEGO dorks.

And I present what you just said, Chris. I did not think of the LEGO, and I also don't like throwing the D word around like that. Like LEGO enthusiasts. LEGO enthusiasts. Sure, sure. They're a tactile people. They're out there in the real world.

I don't like this suggestion that they're all cyber. Yeah, it must be surreal to live in a place with an activation. Can you imagine, if there was an activation in Huntington, they would call the police. No one would even, what do you mean it's activated? What are you talking about? It was, I don't think anyone lives in the Potagogah Garden. I also wanna say, to reiterate, No one would even, what do you mean it's activated? What are you talking about?

It was, I don't think anyone lives in the Botanical Garden. I also want to say, to reiterate, I was also in line. Sorry Russ, I would have to drive three hours for the nearest activation, guaranteed. Yeah. Guaranteed. Unless you're counting the time that they use Columbus as a test market for a new Snapple flavor.

Yeah. I definitely, definitely am gonna have to be driving. By the time that they put tie dye coloring in the Ritter Park fountain that was sort of an activation. Or they put soap in it and make it bubbly. Yes. Yes. Yeah, anyway, I'm too dumb for LEGO is the upshot of this conversation. You're too impatient for LEGO. No, no, no, no.

This is a second story in a month where you are not gonna wait in lines for anything. I did, I did and I'm, and I tried to build it. It was like a 10-step process. I couldn't. It was a field of sunflowers. Wait, one of the ones for children. It was very instructive. One of the free ones for children.

It was for children and I couldn't. There were instructions. They had tables set up with little plaques and they have all the steps and I got to step 10. And I was like, what? Wait. Was it a colorblind? Before we make fun of you, legally you have to tell us if this is a color. And I was like, what? Wait. Was it colorblind? Before we make fun of you,

legally you have to tell us that this is a colorblind. It was not a colorblind thing. Okay, cool. It was a spatial reasoning. We're good to rip, guys. Good to rip. Was it like you were nervous

because other people were watching? Well, yes, because I was also building my sons at the same time. And they see that you have glasses and there's a certain expectation. Well, they all thought I was also an allegor-dork, but clearly I'm not, because I was drowning. Clearly you're not.

Clearly not. That is tough, because they don't want to humiliate you in front of your kid. They're looking at Russ and they're like, if this guy's this bad at Lego, he must love Pez. That's the only other thing that makes sense. That's the rival to Lego in your mind is Pez? For dorks?

All right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, everyone tried to have a better pull, but none came. I guess I win. I'm a K'nex man myself. All right, that's not bad mouse trap. Yeah, you dated yourself. I only Legos, okay. I only fuck with bionicle though. Mm-hmm. You need some circles in the mix can all be squares Everybody still really thinks pez was better Like pez is good. It they were like, I think Pez is pretty good. Everyone is saying like Pez is good.

It's a Lego without any of the fuss. You know? If you know Pez obsesses, like I do, it makes a lot of sense. Perfect. They prefer Pezverts. That's what they say. That's their word. My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Fruschek and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Fruschik, I know the best game of the week. And this is the Besties, a video game club. And just by listening, my friend, you are now officially a member. Welcome to our thrall, feels like too strong a word, but it's not wrong.

This week we got two, count them, two games on tap. There's a sequel to Fantasy Life, and the creator of Katamari Damacy is back with a brand new adventure called Two a T. What's that, Chris Plant? I kinda spoiled it. I got my clauses backwards. You pretty much nailed it.

I don't think people need to know anything else other than what's gonna happen in the show. All right, let's take a break and we'll try to get our shit together. Okay, first up, we's take a break and we'll try to get our shit together. Okay, first up we have Two a Tea, which comes from the creator of Katamari Damacy. It has that musical, fun-loving, bright colored air to it. Justin, you wanna give the premise of this one?

Yeah, so you're a child named, who is by default named Teen. You can name them whatever you want. I couldn't figure out how to do that on the Steam deck, so they were remained named Teen on my game. And it is about a young person named Teen, beginning on their 13th birthday, who for their entire life has had their arms

sort of locked in a T-pose, and probably due to some sort of unknown parentage, it's hinted at throughout the game. It is sort of alluded to, yes, early on. And you are basically like navigating the world as this child with, you know, seeing sort of the, basically a lot of like the accessibility challenges and solutions that the child has like throughout the day.

And there is this like sort of whimsical element too, where the child is able to like occasionally spin with their arms out to fly like a helicopter. Yes, yes. And you may feel like that's what the game, when you see the child fly like a helicopter. Yes, yes. And you may feel like that's what the game, when you see the child fly like a helicopter, you may feel that that is what the game is about. But to this point,

it does not seem to be about that predominantly. It is not a new jumping flash title. It is not about that mainly. Mainly it is more slice of life challenges with like some kind of mini games. As different ways of like getting through the world. Yeah, yeah.

When you, it's like, how are you going to brush your teeth when your arms are extended in a T pose? How are you going to eat? You have the support of a dog that helps you with a lot of things like getting your clothes on, but it's basically just taking a very, very simple premise of you are a teenager who is in a T-pose. How are you going to get through all of life? I spoke with Keita Takahashi at GDC this year, who is the creator who did Katamari, and what was interesting is it didn't originate as a game about disability or accessibility,

which is surprising because once you start playing it, it feels like that's the only thing it could have been. Um, but he really does start games from a very, very simple place, which is a problem and then extrapolating it as far as possible. There is a creature who rolls a ball and gradually it accumulates everything in the world. There is a person who is in the shape of a T.

How did they get through their life? Yeah, I mean, it very clearly has like analogues to not only accessibility issues, but also just like the anxiety of like he goes to school and he like is bullied at school and made fun of. is bullied at school and made fun of. And so there's just like a direct anxiety, like body dysmorphia aspect to it where he feels embarrassed about who he is and you're trying to like overcome that. Which I think in a lot of games, when you're trying to like deal with really heavy topics

like that, it can come off as pretty intense and heavy. But in this one, because of the presentation and because of the general tone, it's very welcoming. And again, like, Slice of Life anime is like a very good analog to it. How would you guys define the Keita Takahashi style to somebody who has not played Akatamari Damacy, or what was the other one

that he made where you were like throwing a party for these little creatures? Is that Nabi Nabi Boy? Yeah, Nabi Nabi Boy, yeah, I think, well that was a different one, right? That was the one where you were stretching out, trying to, I think encircle the moon or some shit like that. What do you call that style of presentation?

I mean, I think it's 1970s children's entertainment, you know, and you can see it especially in this game, whether that is the style of clothes they wear, the like colorfulness of everything, but also the kind of hallucinatory nature of the worlds that you're in. And even the games have that 70s, 80s era video game feel where the creator of the game is not really sure have that 70s, 80s era video game feel where

the creator of the game is not really sure if their idea even works yet. They're just going in a direction and trying something new, not just doing an established genre. It just all feels like the 70s never died for Keita Takahashi, who I don't even know if he was alive during that era. Yeah, now this game is, there's a little bubble that comes up as you start

that says it was made in collaboration with AbleGamers, which I feel like is the only thing for me that, I think that that allowed me to sort of like, I'm not the one who should be judging how these things are like discussed and like what the sort of like most helpful dialogue is surrounding those things. So I think it's it's helpful that they had able gamers like in that conversation because I think that it definitely feels I don't know, I'm I can't even say it feels right to me

because it's not my place to judge, but I'm glad that they are involved in it to make sure it's being handled in a tasteful way. Right. I think that's right, obviously, but I also think the metaphor here is abstract enough that I found a lot of myself in it and challenges that I had as a kid. And some of that is quite literal of having disfigurement as a kid. Um, I, I, I, and, and some of that is like quite literal of like having disfigurement as a kid and the way that like you are seen in the way the world

reacts to you and the way that you change yourself, but also just being a kid is awkward. Being in your body is awkward. And I think this game is really interested in that. I mean, there's also the underlying puberty metaphor here that I think largely works. What did you all think of the music? Oh, the music's amazing. It slaps. It's so fucking good.

So there's like a theme song. I think it's You're the Perfect Shape or something like that is like the theme song. And it plays at the beginning of the episodes. The game is broken up into different episodes. And then there's like a mid-ep episode theme song about a giraffe who loves cooking which is also fantastic. It's like very upbeat jazz. If you like the Katamari soundtrack, like this is all incredibly consistent with that. Rebecca Sugar from Steven Universe did one of the songs. Oh, great. So, I'll give you an idea of the vibe, yeah.

It's just done with such confidence. And the theme song is basically telling you the premise of the game and all the challenges that the boy goes through. Actually, I wouldn't even say it's a boy. It's a teen, non-gendered, so you can be whoever you want, really. And I just thought that was a fun way to present it, just the structure of it being episodic and also just starting each episode with the theme song,

it felt very anime. One complaint that I had about this was, it doesn't have like a profile system and I really wanted my kids to check it out and I got like Charlie played for like an hour, but then to see the sort of like beginning stuff again and get the setup for the premise, you have to like restart your entire game.

There's no- There is a chapter select. There is a way to specifically- But you're not making your own character. Oh, sure. With kids, when you're splitting between two kids, they want their character, their progress. They're, you know, so like that was,

that was kind of tough because I couldn't, I showed them, but I couldn't make as much progress because I had to start restarting the games. Yeah, it's time to make a family share on Steam, buddy. What? You can make a family account on Steam and have them have their own account and you share it. You can't get your own Steam account.

Are you out of your mind? Come home and my son has bought fucking $25,000 in CSGO skins. Are you mad? I can't do that, man. Lock that shit down. Guys, come on, be a parent. Come home and my son has bought fucking $25,000 in CSGO skins. Are you mad? I can't do that man. Lock that shit down. Guys, come on, be a parent.

I think, I do wish, I wish it was more fun. Katamari Damacy is really fun to play and I really so much appreciate what this game is doing and I think that that's really cool. There's a lot of running around with like, for me at least, confusing geometry and a confusing map, trying to figure out where you're going.

And I wish that there was more game here because a lot of this stuff is like repeated and things that you do repeatedly. And I get that part of that's like the slice of life episodic nature, but part of it is just like a little kind of dull. And I wish it was a little bit more fun. I think they do acknowledge that like,

you don't necessarily wanna be doing the same mini game over and over again. So like on day two, which I thought was pretty funny, the mom was like, you know what, if you're hungry or you're not hungry, whatever, who cares? You do what you want. If you wanna brush your teeth, it's up to you. You could have disgusting teeth.

So it does let you skip some of the aspects, but I agree with you, running through the world isn't necessarily the most compelling thing, especially when you compare it to being able to roll up fucking earth. I'm putting it in a ball. How did your kids connect with it? Did it work for them? They really did.

I mean, they both really enjoyed it. It's very tactile, which is good for kids. It's obviously like they got the idea, I mean, they got the concept really quickly. And I think that that was cool. There is like, they struggled some with the, like getting from A to B at the point where they like give you an open world and want you to run around.

It's like, it starts to get kind of confusing about where to go. There's a lot of invisible walls, both like, and that got a little annoying for them. And the younger Cooper was a little bit that you have to be kind of good with like the button prompts because it's not very intuitive. It's a lot of like looking to see. And I had be kind of good with like the button prompts because it's not very intuitive. It's a lot of like looking to see

and I had to kind of be with her to remind her what buttons are left bumper or whatever, which is a dumb name for a button. Which is like seemingly intentional because they want it to feel awkward but I also realized that like for a kid, that's a lot to ask. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is the forever problem with Takahashi's games, basically since Katamari Damacy. And I think this isn't apologizing for it. I think we just should never expect the problem to go away because he doesn't play video games, doesn't really have interest in video games, and doesn't really have interest in traditional design of video games. And I think that results in these games like this. Honestly, like again, everything he's made once he's been away from a traditional developer system for context, when he did Katamari Damacy, he was at a tradition, he was Bendai Namco. then it's been away from that environment. And I think that's why we get these games that feel just strange.

And again, that's not like a... It's not a defense of it. It's just a reason why. It doesn't feel to me, even outside of the premise, it doesn't feel that experimental. It feels like a more narrative game, which feels experimental to some extent for his work, because it tends to be more like, you know, fluid and like open-ended.

This feels way more narrative, way more structured in terms of telling a story. But the game itself does not feel like that different from like a traditional game in that way. So, I mean, there are obviously, there are people that are working in that organization that are like, we gotta turn this, you know,

I'm glad he had the idea about the tea, but like, we gotta turn this into a game. But it's not, but like, it's not, and I don't mean this as a criticism, it's not fun in the sense that you would think of a game being, like, a lot of the other games have a fun central mechanic that is pleasant to interact with and the micro I get it but like on the macro I just don't think.

Yeah, we've talked about it and certainly drag games of the idea that like just moving around the world should be fun and I'm not even talking about like the challenges that the teen faces when like opening doors I just mean like in an open field, it should feel good to run around and it feels fine. It's not, it doesn't feel great. And I think it was just not a priority for them to focus on the like quote game feel of it rather than again, the narrative and the like music and the art design like all felt like that was the focus.

Yeah. Of it and like, I'm gonna put the soundtrack when it gets added to whatever, I'm gonna put it on my play mix, the playlist of like fun music cause it totally goes in line with the Katamari stuff. It's really fun to listen to. I really liked it.

I am continuing to play through it. I wanna know the mystery of the boy and why he is shaped like a T. They're certainly emphasizing that as an important plot point. I know it can't be because his dad is secretly the king of all cosmos, but in my headcanon. Sure.

Yeah, no, I mean, the tracks have been laid for that particular reveal. I'm hoping it just doesn't turn out to be some sort of- I don't think you can, but it's a different company. He doesn't own, he doesn't even get money for it. He doesn't get the ziggy's from Potamare Goss. Well, maybe it's a Christ allegory. Oh yeah, he's partly held.

Hmm. Hey, let's take a break and then talk about fantasy life. I, the girl who's still- La la la la, you are the Christ child. From one fantasy life to another. Yes, this one's more explicitly a fantasy life, because it's the new fantasy life game, the new entry in the fantasy life series,

which I really loved the idea of, and then never, they didn't really make a good one, until now. Can you tell us a little bit about the original one before we dig into this? I'll tell you about the original Fantasy Life. Came out in 3DS, it was developed by Level 5, one of my all-time favorite video game developers.

They made Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2. They made, I believe Dragon Quest 11, 11, 10? They've done some work on the Dragon Quests. They have, their work has an aesthetic that is so incredible. Oh yeah, and Professor Layton, right, that's what I was. Professor Layton, yes, of course. Nino Cooney, the way that they present their games

is so illustrative and painterly and carefully thought out and just like maximum aesthetic all the time. Fantasy Life was their take on the kind of pseudo life simulator cozy genre, came out on 3DS in, God, I don't know, forever ago. And it let you live these different lives, which are basically classes, and some of them were like combat lives,

where you'd run around these levels and fight monsters, but then most of them were like combat lives where you'd run around this, the, you know, these levels and fight monsters. But then most of them were like gathering lives. So you could chop wood or go mining and then there were crafting lives. So you could make shit out of all the stuff and all those systems were interconnected and each class, each life had like a different story that you could live and there was like a lot of content there but it was also the very definition of the like mile wide inch deep kind of criticism that is so often leveraged at bigger games because fantasy life was not

that fun to play. The combat was pretty crazy simple and there just wasn't a lot of richness to those systems. I think they made another, was there Fantasy Life 2 that came out before this? I feel like I missed one, it's possible. I was so-

I don't think so, I thought this was it. Okay, possibly, yeah. That was a game that I was super excited about because it was one of my favorite game developers taking on one of my favorite genres and it just fell flat. This one, Fantasy Life Eye, The Girl Who Steals Time, is very much the same sort of premise. You are an explorer who crash lands on this island

and you travel through time and you end up in this weird world and you gotta take on these jobs so you can earn some money, so you can fly back home, but then you don't go home, you go to a huge open world, and there's all kinds of shit to explore, and the whole time you are switching

between these 14 different classes, I think, which again are split up between like combat classes, so you can be a mercenary with a big two-handed weapon, or you can be a ranger with a bow and arrow, but then there are the gathering classes, you can be a mercenary with a big two handed weapon, or you can be a ranger with a bow and arrow, but then there are the gathering classes. You can be a farmer in this one. You can be an artist in this one. As well as one of the crafting classes.

So you're only playing as your character, but you are taking on different jobs. You are only playing as your character, you're taking on different jobs. In this game, they've made it like a single button press to swap jobs. It is not like a MMORPG where you're having to like lock into a class and it's like a pain in the ass

to change it. The idea is like you have your combat class equipped, you run up to a tree and you press A and then you instantly switch to your woodcutter class and then you can start doing that side of things. But each class you can customize the equipment of each class, you have different skill trees of each class, you have different skill trees for each class, you have different story lines

for each class. There's like, it's pretty meaty, and I will say more substantial this time around than in the, well, in a 3DS game, right? Like you would expect it, this game's out on everything. And I think that they have stuck the landing on that premise a lot better than they did the first time around. That's that's my setup.

I'm curious to hear Chris talk about it because we have not actually had much of a chance to talk about our life experience. Yes, it is stuff to do the video game. It is absurdly big. Everything Griffin just said, multiply that by 10 and you're about like half the way there. There's just so much shit. The easiest way that I find to think about the whole life class system is remember the, um, the last three DS Zelda game that we loved where you would buy weapons, link between worlds, link between worlds, and you would like

acquire a weapon and then like get good with it and then you could unlock it permanently and then you'd go buy another one. That's kind of how this works. Where if you think of these classes or lives as weapons, it's closer to a more traditional game structure because you are just one person and like really what you're getting is the ability to use a hoe, the ability to use a fishing rod, the ability to use a sword. Um, the fun of the game, like that Zelda game, is deciding what order of those things you want to prioritize. So you know right at the beginning, hey, I'm going to need something for

combat, and I'm going to need something to harvest while I'm going from points A to point B. thing to harvest while I'm going from points A to point B. The challenge of the game for completionist in Griffin, this is where I'm curious where your brain is out on this game, is every time you walk anywhere, you are seeing all the other things you could be doing if you had it unlocked every other job. So let's say you're a tree chopper and you're really good with a bow and arrow, while you're going from point A to point B, you'll chop down some trees, and then you'll see all of this great stuff that you want to mine. You're like, well, shit, I better go back and learn how to do that. And suddenly you can get into a kind of vicious loop of just learning how to play

or unlock weapons for the game. Yeah, it is a tough game that kind of asks you to set the pace for it, which is, I think, a bit foolhardy, because there's a point in the game where you're thrown into this ancient city, and you're like, go talk to this guy. You pick up any job you want. You'll do a quick little introductory mission,

and then you can switch jobs. If you want, unlock a different one, no big deal. After you do your first quick little introductory mission and then you can switch jobs if you want unlock a different one No big deal after you do your first like unlock a job mission You can skip the missions for each following job So you can just say like yeah, I want to be a an alchemist But I'm not gonna do the fucking fetch quest for it They just let you skip it and now you have the class so like it'll take you a couple hours But you can unlock every class then all of a sudden what Chris is saying is not like that huge of an issue.

You do have to keep those classes leveled up. If you go to like a hard dungeon, because the resources there are higher level and you have to be like able to mine those higher level resources with like a higher level class in order to take it on. So like, there's so much stuff to do. There's so much stuff to unlock, so much stuff to explore, so many different progression hooks to get stuck in. And so when you get thrown in, like, I don't know,

I went bananas and was like, well, I gotta unlock every class. I'm gonna start doing these missions, start getting some upgrades. And then I went a little bit further in the story and unlocked like fucking Animal Crossing. Like it unlocked a whole chunk of the game that I was not aware existed because I had spent so much time kind of spinning my wheels

leveling up all these different lives. But you turn a corner. When you're talking about Animal Crossing, it's just really quick to dig into that. Yeah, sure. It's Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing. It's like set up an entire town, refurbish an entire area, you know, decorate your house.

It's, I mean, Animal Crossing. It honestly reminded me of a, I mean, Animal Crossing. It honestly reminded me of a mix between sort of Animal Crossing and the city building kind of aspect of Dark Cloud, and Dark Cloud 2, if that rings a bell with anyone. Because you're like putting together these houses for your villagers, and your villagers are teammates

that you can actually take out onto the field with you, and you can equip them with their own shit, and they'll help you out when you're mining resources, or fighting bad guys, there's multiplayer that will sort of fill that same role too, but there's this sort of offline, uh, you know, AI companion sort of thing that you got going on, and they'll give you requests, and you have to fulfill them. Um, and so you do that, and you're like, okay, cool, this is like Dark Cloud 2, this fucking rules, I'm gonna do this for a while, you do that for a while, and then you turn the corner, and you're like, okay, cool, this is like Dark Cloud 2, this fucking rules, I'm gonna do this for a while. You do that for a while and then you turn the corner and it's like, oh, by the way, here's a whole other

fucking like, here's a whole nother part of the game. I feel like every few hours the game would just throw some new mechanic at you. There's a point right where Griffin's talking about where like you've done the Animal Crossing stuff for a little while and they're like, oh hey, do you ever get around to going and doing that thing and you go and do it and they're like, oh good, you should take that item you found to the other island on the map. And you're like,

oh, the one in the past, the present or the in between. And they're like, well, it's in the present or sorry, the past, but actually in the map pulls out and you see a map view and a cloud raises and you realize, oh, there's multiple massive open worlds that they're just going to parse out through the course of the game. It feels like when people are in like junior high or high school and they're like, I'm gonna make video games for a living. And like, what are you gonna do? Well, it's gonna be Animal Crossing

and it's also gonna be an open world combat game. It's also gonna be Zelda and there's gonna be a Metroid area and there's gonna be this. In what is, I find shocking and impressive is it mostly works. I don't think it's any of it's bad. It's just a lot.

You sound like a, you sound completely out of touch when you are talking about this game because you're just listing off most of video games in this one little thing. Well, I guess to echo the question that came up in the first section, like, does it feel good? Is it very? It feels better. It feels better than Fantasy Life 1. Okay, for someone that didn't, like,

does it feel better than, like, Animal Crossing, just the move around the world? I'm not even thinking about, like, yeah, that's fine. Like, I'm not talking about that. I'm thinking about, like, the combat, right? That's a big element of the game, is you're going through these dungeons. You can't get through the story of this thing

without fighting some bad guys here and there, right? And the combat in Fantasy Life 1 was just, like, repress A, a whole lot. Like, there was not a whole lot to it. In this one, there is some more depth to it. I think it is an improvement, if this means anything to you at all, over like a rune factory, which is very much doing the same thing

of like fantasy mixed with farming stuff. Like I think it works a little bit better than that. And I could see it being like kind of engaging. There's ways of like, as you explore the areas and you do shit, you fulfill quests, and you hunt these rare monsters and rare resources, the areas themselves level up, so they become more difficult and more difficult and more difficult

and more difficult, and the rewards that you get become better and better and better. I can see that being like a pretty great little grindy experience with friends, playing multiplayer. The combat is not like Hyper Light Drifter, like you're not doing now. It's a game about overlapping systems.

Like it's a game about how does going out and solving these quests improve your town and how does improving your town help you save these mysterious people who are turning into household objects and how does doing that affect the future when you go to it and all of those things. So I think because it is doing so many top level

overlapping systems, any one system itself is pretty simple. Which is I think fine. I mean, we, you know, I look at Stardew for example, like the combat in Stardew is not very good, like it's very basic. But then we've seen games that have like evolved on the Stardew model and like made things feel

a little bit better, but again, you're not gonna feel like you have a full on Zelda in your game. But to continue that analogy, I have only just unlocked farming. You don't start the game with farming, you have to unlock farming eventually, and it doesn't seem as rich and complex

and fully featured and customizable as a Stardew, right? So it's like, this game does a lot of stuff, it does a lot of stuff way better than the first game, way, way better. So like, I know people who have an affinity for the first game, I bet they're ba-da-pa-pa-pa loving it. And I think it does all the stuff that it does, I mean, fairly well, like better than serviceable.

Some of the stuff is, I genuinely have been enjoying just running around and hunting monsters and checking off all my quests for all my different little classes and getting resources, going home, crafting a bunch of shit, selling it for money, buying new formulas to craft. I'm pretty caught up in that stuff. It doesn't do any of that stuff 10 out of 10 amazing, I don't think, but it does so much stuff so well, and so many of those systems that work so well are interconnected that, I don't know,

I think it's just a, I think it's a really fucking impressive thing that also looks and sounds absolutely incredible. I'm obsessed with the whole like level five style. Of level five games, I think it's the most playable. But the gameplay part is not always the best thing about a level five game for me. It's usually the art and the sound.

I mean, I like doing matchstick puzzles, let me just say. Yeah, for sure. They make fucking good ass matchstick puzzles. That's true, that's true. I will admit, like when you first pitched it and I saw the title, it sounded like Rune Factory and I've played Rune Factory and I found it pretty intolerable personally. Yeah.

Um, and this sounds more enjoyable because it allows you to like a little bit pick your own course. My big recommendation is if you don't have a Switch but you want a Switch like game this is a great option. I mean the original one was published by Nintendo and they have retained a lot of that energy. If this had been published by Nintendo it wouldn't surprise me but obviously that's a different world. Yeah, it feels like Nintendo has their own slice of this pie at this point. Yeah, they don't need this right now, yeah.

We do get one letter I wanted to call out. This comes from Cody. Cody writes, Hey y'all, loved your recent discussion of Shotgun Cop Man. One thing that stuck with me was the note by Russ, who sort of alluded to minimalism, stripping back components mechanics to make it more fun. For those that aren't aware, this was on a Restes episode,

but we talked about this game, Shotgun Cop Man, which was like, kind of like a Super Meat Boy with like 360 shooting mechanics to it. You get, you do everything with a shotgun, basically. You can jump, you can fly, you can kill. Cool, anyway. Yeah, it's. Anyway, back to the letter. Uh, Cody writes, it reminded me of this quote from Antoine Desse. Oh my God.

I'm not going to pronounce that. Antoine Desse is how I'm going to call it. Do you, does anyone speak French? Nah, man. Lots of people do dude. Okay. Someone, I'm going to say it phon, and then someone can figure it out. Ex-oob-perry, who wrote...

I bet if they know him in real life, then they probably recognize it. Why did I start doing the accent? Perfection is achieved not when there is... Give it three more tries. Give it three or four more tries. This is the quote. Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Oh, we love that.

I like that. Oh, isn't that nice? Back to Cody. I work as a backend engineer at Gearbox, building and maintaining the shift platform. We see a lot of that principle in a lot of code, clean, elegant solutions that are always better than overly complex ones. For Justin, you see this principle in jigs. For example, a cross-cut sled doesn't really need a bottom to do its job well.

I assume that's a woodworking thing. Every unnecessary addition just gets in the way. So here's a challenge question. What is your favorite game that excels in doing less? Something that embraces simplicity, in design, mechanics, and presentation? Okay. Gosh. I don't think that, are we talking about removing in design, mechanics, and presentation. Oh, gosh. Okay, I don't think that...

Are we talking about removing all the presentational aspects or like winnowing the gameplay down to... Because I would argue that's two different things, right? You can have a very minimalistic presentation with a... More of the second, I think, is what we're talking about. I kind of interpreted it as both. Really? Okay. I think... I'll give you an example.

When I was reading this, the game that jumped into my head was N or N plus, which is the 2D ninja platforming game that has actually a surprising amount of depth to it, but like the present presentationally, like it's all like vector art. Like it's very, very simple, very minimalist, very focused on just presenting this very clean platforming game,

which I think services the amount of depth to it, because there is a lot of like physics depth to like moving around that world, and it allows you to just focus on that. So I don't know if that helps you guys think of this. I mean, I think the incremental genre is pretty incredible at this kind of by definition. Like you can't have too much cruft there.

Remind me of an example of that. Universal paper clips, cookie clicker, like all of those things. Darkroom. Darkroom is. Is there really an example of this? Yeah, I mean, Darkroom is. There's almost not a UI for that.

Darkroom, or maybe I'm thinking of the ensign, which is the one that comes after Darkroom. One of those adds like a whole second like exploration side of things. But like incremental games in general like are just a simple UI for the most part and numbers that go up and mathematical kind of algorithms and that's just about it.

And they are so sticky for me. Okay, to focus this a little bit, about it and they are so sticky for me. Okay, to focus this a little bit, I would like to know your guys' favorite like elemental video game where like they're so, the mechanics are so threadbare that it starts to almost feel like a classic, like chess. Because you have like one mechanic and it works.

The one that for me was like for a long time, it was like, iOS a long time, it was like, iOS was the best for this. Cause like, flappy bird and not flappy bird, tiny wings and tilt to live. There was a lot of like really focused small. Cannibal. Cannibal.

Oh, cannibal is a clap. Man, you can still give someone a controller, give your kids cannibal. It hits,, it hits. It still hits, and it's just that one thing, it's great. Super Hexagon. Super Hexagon is a great example. Was there an era of these?

Does it still exist? Yeah, sure, fuckin' well, it sounds like it. I mean, it sounds like when companies were making, by companies I usually mean like two or three people at a time were making iOS games, you couldn't make, you couldn't get too complex because they weren't especially powerful in the early days. And also like people weren't quite sure how to make

big stuff on them yet. A lot of people were also like willfully trying to jam more controls into games than a touch screen can really like support. And I feel like it was around like Infinity Blade came out and Apple pushed so hard, like look what this fucking phone can do, guys, you're gonna shit your pants.

Where then it all of a sudden, like, I don't know, I feel like the tone shifted a little bit and now it was more about recreating AAA experiences as much as you could. I mean, I still think there's a pretty large contingent. Absolutely. Card games and like more traditional like board game style games on there. But you're right.

There's also the like, we're just going to do Resident Evil 4, you know, on a phone. I think Portal is a good example of this in terms of having a idea and extrapolating that as far as you can and cutting anything else. Like there's a bad version of Portal where suddenly you have guns and you're just running around and shooting stuff. Right, sure. It's also a good, that's a good example of both

because it starts from a very minimalist visual standpoint and then they start like creeping in with like more interesting environments and things like that. So you kind of see the range of it, but the gameplay never gets technically more complex than the first Portal. It's really just the same idea.

Yeah, I also think Return of the Obra Dinn, I think there are a few games where it takes an idea and sticks purely to that idea. As a one bit art form, you don't get much more minimalist. If you were more minimalist than that, there would be nothing. There would be no bits. No bits left.

That's true. Griffin, did you ever get into the four kilobytes scene? Do you know about this? Is that like Game Boy palette sort of shit? No, it's the like European demo scene where these artists would use just four kilobytes of information and create these like 3D hallucinatory visuals. They have big parties for them, kind of type of way in culture.

I don't know what part of that you think sounds like mine. You are the raver. It sounds cool, but I would never, I would not know how to find those functions. Something about that tinkering, but yeah, I'm super interested in people who do those sorts of things where you have as little information as possible and try to accomplish something.

Justin's more of the tinkerer these days. He is, that's true. I'm more of the tailor, I think. And rest is the spy. Listen, speaking of tinkering, SteamOS is actually out. Didn't you guys fuck with it? I'm so scared to fuck with Bazite because I just got it to work.

I knew this was gonna happen, that I was gonna spend a day putting Bazite on my ROG Ally and dual booting. So to contextualize for people that aren't monitoring this space very closely, for devices like ROG, the ROG Ally, AllyX, et cetera, that are default Windows handhelds, there's been a way to dual boot those into other operating systems, most notably Bazite,

which creates a Steam-like experience, Steam Deck-like experience on the ROG Alliex. But now Steam, Valve has released Steam OS that is natively, you can install it on the ROG Allie, the Legion Go, other handhelds like that, which is really interesting, one because there's a lot of frustrating things about using Windows for your device,

not the least of which, like, if you don't wanna mess with Microsoft, I completely understand that. And there's a lot of, most notably, the Linux kernel will let you suspend your system, like mid-game, which is not, doesn't sound massive until you start, don't have it, because you've got really used to it. 100,000 times,, doesn't sound massive until you start, don't have it.

Cause you got really used to it. A lot of other portable places, but like the, so that is very cool. I have not done it because I have Bazzite running and I don't want to mess with it. And I do not know the use case for installing SteamOS on a device that already has another OS dual booting into it. Like, I don't, no one's gonna be there to help me.

I'm gonna be way too down the well. Way too down deep. You'd wipe all that Bazite work that you did. Yeah, I'll go back to the start. We'd start fresh. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have a rogue ally, so I wasn't really motivated to do it.

But it does seem like if you were to get one today, rather than getting Bazite, you would just do the traditional Steam OS. Very exciting. The more notable thing is this space, for this space to work, it has to be designed for and designed towards, and it's a much more noble, I think useful thing

of working towards than like VR, for example, which was sort of like the, the, the push. And I think the push for the next few years, rather than a graphical push, like the graphical arms race that has defined so much of gaming for so many years, I think it's going to be more about this, like how small can you make it? How, how small can you make it run? And I think a wider distribution of a universal operating system, I think is a great way to get more of a standard there because it really hasn't been one.

The Steam OS and like having a Steam Deck has like Linux pill meat more than like no other thing. This has been like the turning point where Linux was scary before. And because there's all these new people using it and making it palpable, I can go into Steam desktop mode and feel comfortable messing around in there. And you don't have all the fucking cruft that's floating around with like, you should upgrade to 365.

There's all sorts of upsides to it. So I'm incredibly jazzed at the prospects. I have a lot of people I knew in college I need to apologize to. Yeah. For silently and sometimes verbally judging them. incredibly jazzed at the prospects. I have a lot of people I knew in college I need to apologize to. For silently and sometimes verbally judging them. Yeah, you pushed them down, you did all sorts of stuff. I would also highly recommend

if you're thinking about doing anything like this at all, if you get one of these devices, get yourself a mini keyboard, RII, RE, or RRI, I don't know if you pronounce, I guess you could say RE. Terrible SEO. Yeah, I know, right if you pronounce, I guess you could say Ree. Terrible SEO. Yeah, I know, right? R-I-I, they make a lot of mini keyboards

that have the dongles stored inside the keyboard. There you go, Griffin. And if you're gonna be doing anything that requires you getting into the desktop, you can get them for 25 bucks on Amazon, 22 bucks. They're really well worth it. I keep one in my backpack now in case I need to get in there and mess around with things.

I made Platinum III in my Dota League using this bad boy. Oh, yeah. I don't know if that's a thing. I don't know. Sounded right. Sounded good to me. Are we doing honorable mentions? I thought we already started.

It kind of sounded like we were. Oh, okay, cool. It felt like we had organically kind of just merged into it. Yeah. I finished this season of the rehearsal. I'd strongly recommend once again, everyone watch it. I can't tell you anything about it. You shouldn't read anything about it.

But that last episode was quite unexpected. It goes- I watched one episode and I'm gonna give it the Justin McIlroy thumbs down. Did not enjoy enjoy would not recommend Can't hey we warned you about the first 15 minutes of the first episode I watched the sec I skipped to the second episode with the singing competition and still a big No, that's it. Yeah, that's a tough one for J man. I get that no it's not for me. It's not from a watch

it's from like a holistic like existence perspective, but yeah, yeah Everybody should make their art. That's right I Finished expedition 33. Oh, yeah, how was that? Extremely good. I clocked in around 42 hours. I did quite a bit of the side content. It's pretty breezy, I think, by JRPG standards. I know that's a long time to play a game,

but I think that it's an ending of a video game that people are gonna be talking about for a while. I think they make some pretty bold fucking choices that I was really genuinely, I don't know, stuck with me in a way that I was. To what extent is it setting this up for like a, cause like everything about the structure feels like setting it up for like a big

franchise universe type deal. Does it seem like that? It is self, it is definitely self contained, but I also, I could see there being more stuff to come out of it, but there is, I mean, the ending is an ending. The ending is quite, I don't know, it completes the arc of the thing, and it does so in a way that the game definitely earns

throughout its time. There is a, the three act sort of structure of the game is as such that like, when you start the third act, you can go right and finish it. You can go right and finish it, but it's got that sort of like, you know, do you wanna go out and really explore more shit and fill out more of the empty spaces in the story and the characters and et cetera, et cetera.

And I really encourage you to do so. I don't know, I don't wanna spoil it obviously, but the ending is, it's fucking wild that they ended it the way that they ended it. And it's very, very cool to see a game come out and just like, I don't know, man, just beat ass in so many different ways and leave you with like a really thought-provoking ending.

It's like, I don't know, it's the whole package. It's great. There are parts of me that think that maybe I need to not go to sleep at 10.30 at night anymore. And just stay, that's my secret. I do not know how to make the math work otherwise. To like finish that.

I've been staying up late, a lot lately. Mostly working on projects and shit, but yeah, I'll crash a few hours of Expo 33 in there where I can. You gotta put in the effort, you gotta put in the labor to be a real gamer sometimes. You're not gonna catch Griffin standing in line. No fucking way, man. No way, unless he's got a Steam Deck in his hand.

Yeah, I don't fuck with Steam Decks. I need the rogue ally because I need the fast load time so I can get in as much gaming as I possibly can. The most dense pixels as possible. Can I tell you guys what I have got, gaming as I possibly can. The most dense pixels as possible. Can I tell you guys what I have got, been messing around with this week? Yeah.

It's called Survival Kids. You wanna play Survival Kids? Mm-mm. It's on Game Boy Color. It's also known as Stranded Kids. It's a really interesting, it's fascinating, man. If you go back and play this little guy, you're a little kid and you watch it up on a beach

and you have nothing and you have no information. And for a game from this era, that feels so strange. But you're literally like walking around a deserted island, finding like sticks and rocks to start like little fires. You're finding shells to dig meat out of to try to stay alive. You need fresh water. You need shelter.

You're like trying to set up a whole like living situation. I miss this completely, but I did play, later this was continued as Lost in Blue on the Nintendo PS. I don't know, right? So this is where the series started. They were called Survival Kids, whatever, whatever is where the series started they were called survival kids Whatever whatever in Japan, but here

They were just lost in blue because the survival kids name didn't really have the did you see I like that Survival kids comes out in next week. Yeah, it's crazy timing like it's Yes an official Switch 2. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Yes, an official, official re-release on the Nintendo classics service. That's great.

So you'll be able to play that now. You can go play now. No, but there's also a sequel. There's a new, a reboot of it coming out. A 3D version of Survival Kids. Yeah. You're kidding. Switch 2's launch, yeah.

Fantastic. Fuck yeah, man. Fantastic. How's the time? That's, hey listen, this was even more timely than I knew, but go check out Survival Kids. You can play the re-release now. You can go play the re-release of it.

It looks like the Link's Awakening Engine. That's what it looks like. It's really interesting. The things that they're doing, it's weird. It definitely feels a little bit like proof of concept, because it's the first one in a very long running series, but there are ideas that I didn't know were in the ether at this point like in terms of like what a survival game looks Like so from that historical perspective. It's it's it's cool the gameboy color box art is also just real good

It can't be it real real good My thing jaws Saw jaws the other night. Pretty good. Oh yeah, with the shark and what all? You know, it's summertime, baby. That means you've gotta watch Jaws, you gotta watch The Sandlot, you gotta watch Dirty Dancing.

Did you ever see that play? Did I tell you guys about that play? Oh, about the making of Jaws? About the making of Jaws. Yeah, did you like it? It was great, it was fascinating. I don't know if it would work as well if the guy who played Quinn's son is not playing his role.

That was the context in which I saw it. So that was- Ideal, it seems. Yeah, definitely. He is so good at playing Robert Shaw, it's crazy. You wouldn't believe it. Imagine that. He's like so much like him, it's wild. Null's eyes.

Cool, that's all I've got. Anything else? I mean, I've also been watching Devil's Plan, but I think you guys, I don't think the world's ready to hear more discussion. Hey, I found the stupidest reality show that's called Gotta Get Out. Do you know what that show's about?

There's a room, a house full of people, half are celebrities, half are not. All the doors are locked. There is a gate. There is a million dollars on offer and a money clock that is ticking up. A dollar a minute or whatever, a dollar every few seconds, it's ticking up. And if you escape the house,

then you get to take all the money that's currently accrued in the pot. But people are watching everyone else to try to escape. There are buttons to like crash the gates, to close the gates throughout the house. There is a watch tower where people are watching, but you can get escape attempts. Randomly, you can collect escape attempts

like there's gonna be a recycling truck coming through. If you hide in this recycling bin at 3 p.m., there's an exfiltration strategy, or like we've hidden keys to a Maserati out front if you can find it, or you'll get people working as a team, like one lady found a hidden Santa costume, and she could use the Santa costume. And if they have a partner, they could decide to go back

and split the money with their partner or not. And that's the whole show, is called, you gotta get out. That's great. Scrape, dude. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. Spencer from the Hills is on it, and he exclusively wears Heidi Montag T-shirts.

And I do think that that is very good. I do have to give him credit for that. Are they still together? Different ones too, the guy's like a dozen Heidi Montag T-shirts. Are they together still? Yes, yes they are. They made it work.

They're very much in love. Good. I love that, that's great. They have several kids. Good for them. I'm one of them. That's my dad and mom. I want, I wanted to thank you. It's my mom and dad too, I guess.

I love you, mom and dad. Who's this old, who's this fucking old guy we played Dungeons and Dragons with? Not Spitsnake. He took us from our real parents, Spitzer and me. Yeah, dude, like a thief of the night. What are we doing next week? Good question.

Next week we are doing two games. Due to some travel concerns, we wanna make sure that portable games are an option, but we're doing Elden Ring Night Rain and Monster Train 2. So we'll be covering both of those games, and I'm very excited for them because they're both pretty major, I guess, sequel-ish is for big games. Is that what we're calling Elden Ring Night Rain? Is that what we're calling you? Well, that's why I added the ish. It's a sequel-ish. I also want to thank our patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties. We have Kieran, we have Arianna, we have Camille, and we have Sawyer.

Thank you for being patrons. Thank you for everyone else for being so supportive and being patrons of the besties. We're doing our best. We hope you appreciate us in the wayies. We're doing our best. We hope you appreciate us in the way that we greatly, greatly appreciate you. We have a new episode of the Resties that it's up and in your feed.

And we're gonna have a new bracket coming at you real soon. So keep an eye out for that next week. I think that's it. Cool. Okay. What are we going to do first this week on the Besties? Be sure to join us again next week for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!